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Wednesday, September 14, 2011

America’s New Challenge Among Muslim States Is Democracy

By Mustafa Malik

After
9/11 I had visited my mother four other times in the village of Polashpur in
northeastern Bangladesh. She is 92 and lives in my ancestral home, surrounded
by three fish ponds and shaded by sprawling mango and jackfruit trees.
Bangladeshis are nearly 90 percent Muslim, and on each of those four trips,
neighbors peppered me with critical questions about the United States. Could
the U.S. hold on to its occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq? Why did Americans
hate Islam? How badly were American Muslims being treated by them?

However,
the last time, on my fifth visit, the America-bashing was less intense. One
person, alluding to Egyptian protesters’ attack on the Israeli embassy in
Cairo, wanted to know if Washington could still help preserve the “Israeli
domination” over Arabs. When would U.S. troops be leaving Afghanistan? asked
another. Is the United States or China “the stronger country now?” inquired yet
another.

Some
of these inquires and comments echoed sentiments I had recently encountered in
the Middle East. On Aug. 21, Salim Kanoo, a schoolteacher in Manama, Bahrain,
said to me that the Arab democratic movements would eventually target “U.S.
bases and troops” near that city and in other Persian Gulf countries. Could
America handle Arab democracy, which might bring anti-American forces to power?
he asked.

America’s
impending retreat from Afghanistan and Iraq, serious economic downturn and the
Arab Spring have convinced many Muslims that the Muslim world is wiggling out
of American hegemony. I can see, too, that war fatigue has set in much of
America. Asked recently why Britain and France, rather than the United States,
were leading the war effort in Libya, Senator Richard Lugar, An Indiana
Republican, said, “The fact is, we cannot afford more wars.”

The
lesson of Vietnam, dismissed by neoconservative and other hawks, has begun to
sink in among Americans. Vietnam’s main lesson, former Defense Secretary Robert
McNamara said in 1995, was that “we failed to recognize the limitations of
modern, high-technology military equipment, forces and doctrine in confronting
highly motivated people’s movements.”

Contemporary
Muslim “people’s movements” have been fueled mainly by modernization and the
strengthened bond of the global Muslim community, the umma. Twenty-five years
ago few people in Polashpur would have wanted to discuss foreign invasion of a
far-away Muslim country. The rural village then had no electricity, no
telephones, no newspaper readers, one college graduate and one or two radio
sets. Today my home and a host of others are electrified. Just about every
family has one or more mobile phones. College graduates and students abound. So
do radio sets and news consumers, many of whom flock to the nearby Ratanganj
bazaar to read newspapers. Dozens of Polashpuris live and work in towns and
cities in Bangladesh and abroad.

The
heightened awareness of the world and of the spread of the ideas of the rights
and democracy have plunged a number of Muslim societies into struggles for
freedom – against domestic tyranny on the one hand and foreign occupation and
hegemony on the other. The Arab Spring belongs to the former category of
struggle. The struggle against the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq
belong to the other.

The
Information Age has helped bring Muslims everywhere in wider and closer mutual
interaction, bolstering their umma bond. A Pew Research Center survey found
last year that Muslims in most countries considered themselves Muslims first
and citizens of their countries second.

A
research project I conducted in the late 1990s revealed that a key source of
Muslims’ deepened affinity with their global community is their disenchantment
with post-colonial-era nation-states and state institutions. Most of today’s
Muslim states were carved out, often capriciously, by European colonial powers.
These states are run through legal systems that are often alien to local social
norms by badly corrupt and uncaring bureaucracies and governments. No wonder
citizens of these states feel stronger pull of their faith and global community
than of the corrupt institutions of their artificial states.

So
when the United States invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, or waged its anti-terror
campaign killing, maiming and harassing Muslims, anti-American sentiments
ratcheted up around the Muslim world, including in Polashpur, as I had observed
during my earlier visits.

The
impotence of the American military power – shown in the “war on terror” and in
Iraq and Afghanistan – has helped rejuvenate Muslim movements against U.S. and
Israeli hegemony as much as domestic political repression. Muslim societies
that are evolving from the two-pronged struggle are likely to go through a
period of turmoil, which accompanied the democratization process in almost
every Western country. Eventually, they are expected to settle down as stable
democracies. Muslim democracies will, however, be underpinned by Islamic social
and cultural values – as we see in Turkey, Iraq and Pakistan. Egypt, Libya,
Yemen and most of the other Muslim societies struggling to democratize are
expected follow the same path.

Post-9/11
America, where paranoia about “political Islam” has stalked large swaths of
society and much of the foreign policy establishment, could face the challenge
of handling democracies that adhere to Islamic values. But Americans are
pragmatic and appear to have begun to take stock of the futility of their
campaign to defeat “terror” and stem the tide of Islamic politics. Eventually,
they are likely to appreciate the need to do business with resurgent Islam.

As
I told the Bahraini schoolteacher, Americans will come around to adapting to
Muslim democracies as they did to the communist Soviet Union and China.

-This commentary was published in The Daily Star on 14/09/2011
-Mustafa Malik, an international affairs columnist in Washington, hosts the
blog Islam and the West (www.islam-and-west.com)

About Me

I graduated from the French University in Beirut (St Joseph) specialising in Political and Economic Sciences. I started my working life in 1973 as a reporter and journalist for the pan-Arab magazine “Al-Hawadess” in Lebanon later becoming its Washington, D.C. correspondent. I subsequently moved to London in 1979 joining “Al-Majallah” magazine as its Deputy Managing Editor. In 1984 joined “Assayad” magazine in London initially as its Managing Editor and later as Editor-in-Chief. Following this, in 1990 I joined “Al-Wasat” magazine (part of the Dar-Al-Hayat Group) in London as a Managing Editor. In 2011 I became the Editor-In-Chief of Miraat el-Khaleej (Gulf Mirror). In July 2012 I became the Chairman of The Board of Asswak Al-Arab Publishing Ltd in UK and the Editor In Chief of its first Publication "Asswak Al-Arab" Magazine (Arab Markets Magazine) (www.asswak-alarab.com).

I have already authored five books. The first “The Tears of the Horizon” is a love story. The second “The Winter of Discontent in The Gulf” (1991) focuses on the first Gulf war sparked by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. His third book is entitled “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: From Balfour Promise to Bush Declaration: The Complications and the Road to a Lasting Peace” (March 2008). The fourth book is titled “How Iran Plans to Fight America and Dominate the Middle East” (October 2008) And the fifth and the most recent is titled "JIHAD'S NEW HEARTLANDS: Why The West Has Failed To Contain Islamic Fundamentalism" (May 2011).

Furthermore, I wrote the memoirs of national security advisor to US President Ronald Reagan, Mr Robert McFarlane, serializing them in “Al-Wasat” magazine over 14 episodes in 1992.

Over the years, I have interviewed and met several world leaders such as American President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Margaret Thacher, Late King Hassan II of Morocco, Late King Hussein of Jordan,Tunisian President Zein El-Abedine Bin Ali, Lybian Leader Moammar Al-Quadhafi,President Amine Gemayel of Lebanon,late Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, Late Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat, Haitian President Jean Claude Duvalier, Late United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan,Algerian President Shazli Bin Jdid, Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Siyagha and more...